The Swiss Cottage is not in Switzerland, and neither is the Swiss Cottage Library

THE term Swiss Cottage is intriguing and confusing: it refers to an old Swiss-style inn, from which not just the Library but the area takes its name.
         The Library building has a history of both breaking up and coming together. The breaking up was brutal: the bombing of the previous library nearby during an air raid of the Second World War. The coming together was the birth of Camden borough fifty years ago, about the same time as the new, brutal library was opened.

Second World War air raid damage to Hampstead Library, Finchley Road. Photo Camden Arts Centre

        
Brutal it was in war, but the new library is Brutal in architecture, for Brutalism was a school of design. Like many a term it started off as criticism and ended as an official name.

Swiss Cottage Library's graceful Brutalist architecture winds up to first floor

          The Library is a listed building protected from those who might want to change it. The architectural award it won years ago was hailed with praise or derision, according to taste.
          Now the Library's beautiful and stark spiral staircases, and its glass and steel interiors are established borough treasures.
          In fact the immediate area is a treasure-house of modernity, with neighbouring leisure centre, swimming-pool and theatre.
          However, you can still find the past in the Library's Reserve Stock, with its books going back a hundred years and more, and still available to readers. I always look at the date-stamps on the sheet in the front of a book to see how far back it has been borrowed.